books:

	Contrails Over the Mojave: The Golden Age of Jet Flight Testing at Edwards Air Force Base George J. Marrett Naval Institute Press, 2008 - 264 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Marrett takes you into the cockpit with him going vertical in a T-38 Talon, high-G maneuvering in an F-4C Phantom and wet runway landing tests in the accident-prone F-111A Aardvark. Marrett relives stories of crashes when his test pilot friends were killed. He writes about Air Force test pilot Col. 'Silver Fox' Stephens setting a world speed record in the YF-12 Blackbird and Lockheed test pilot Bob Gilliland flying a single-engine, minimum-control speed stall in the SR-71 spy plane. He recounts dead-sticking a T-38 to a landing on Rogers Dry Lake after a twin-engine failure and conducting dangerous tail hook barrier testing in a fighter jet without a canopy. Marrett also writes about a UFO sighting in the night sky above the Mojave Desert, a mysterious sighting now referred to as 'The Edwards Encounter.'

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An Excellent Book

George Marrett has written an accurate, detailed and concise book about the flight test activities at Edwards Air Force Base during the 1960's. His ability to lend a personal touch to the people involved was remarkable.


"The Right Stuff" for USAF fighter testing programs

George Marrett vividly recounts his memoirs of the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base in "Contrails Over the Mojave". Marrett and his fellow test pilots constantly pushed the performance envelope in the mid-1960s to advance American military aviation.

Marrett's interest in aviation began at an early age during the height of World War II. He and his friend Bob used to run around the backyard pretending to be fighter pilots, or sometimes a bomber crew on a mission over Germany. He was always the co-pilot, because Bob said that you had to have a silver whistle to be the pilot. Marrett continues "I envied Bob and his whistle and promised myself that someday I would get a whistle and advance into the lofty ranks of the pilots. I never asked Bob why a whistle was required. It was just a requirement - that was enough for a young boy." After graduating flight school, he earned silver wings, but he was always trying to earn his next `silver whistle'.

The book does an outstanding job of focusing on the major events in Marrett's 12-year Air Force career. After his flight training at Bainbridge AFB, Georgia, he traveled to San Francisco, California to stand fighter alert in the nuclear-missile armed F-101B Voodoo. It was here that he learned many of the important lessons for young fighter pilots, and he also set himself up for success as a future test pilot.
After graduating from Col Chuck Yeager's `Charm School', Marrett finally became a test pilot. In this section, the book's scope expands to cover the contributions of the entire fighter branch, not only the achievements of Capt Marrett. To name a few of the bigger testing programs, the book offers recollections for the X-15; the century series fighters; the XB-70 Valkyrie; the SR-71/YF-12/A-12; the F-4 Phantom; and the F-5 Freedom Fighter.

Along with his engaging recollections of the aerial achievements, Marrett also captures the subtle entrenchment of bureaucracy at Edwards AFB. Along with the rapid expansion of the base, the Air Force Flight Test Center had to deal with increased oversight from the Air Force. As aircraft design knowledge (and aircraft prices) increased, there was an increase in the safety requirements at the installation. Tragically, Marrett recants the stories of far too many pilots who gave their lives chasing the next whistle.

Marrett is an extremely talented author. "Contrails Over the Mojave" is an insider's look at the flight testing of America's greatest fighter planes of the 1960s. Every aviation enthusiast needs to set aside a space on the bookshelf alongside Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff".

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Great service; exactly as advertised

Book was in perfect condition. Exactly as advertised and I couldn't be happier. It arrived in just a couple of days after I ordered it.


Entertaining book. However...

"Contrails Over the Mojave" is certainly an entertaining book about one of my favorite subjects. I learned a lot of details about some of the famous and not-so-famous flight test projects at Edwards. The author's qualifications to write this book are beyond reproach.

However...

There are at least two pages in the book (pages 68-69, Chapter 6) that are nearly identical to text found in Chapter 10 of a book entitled "Aerospace Pilot," by Charles Coombs, published in 1964 by William Morrow and Company, Inc. There is no attribution or acknowledgement of the source of the text in either book, so I don't really know what to think here. Using substantial portions of material without attribution has a name -- it's called plagiarism.

To be fair, perhaps the section of text in question was actually written by Marrett originally, and used by Coombs first in his 1964 book. I don't know. What I do know is that SOMEBODY wrote it, and one of the authors appears to have lifted it from another.

This was a minor detraction from what is otherwise a very good book.

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Contrails Over the Mojavie

This book provided me with information and details about programs at Edwards Air Force Base which were not available to me when I service as an Air Force Sargent at Edwards AFB during the 1960s.


reviews: page 1, 2

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